First and foremost, I wish to give all glory, honour and adoration to Almighty God for His grace to stand here today, to give the 114th inaugural lecture of this University, my Alma matter. I gained admission into this University in 1970 and started a journey (man was so limited to know about), but God Almighty, for He alone knows the end from the beginning.

I enrolled to read medicine, but could not meet the requirement to be among the first twenty that Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) could accommodate in helping the young Midwest Institute (MIT) then. So I had to settle for B.Sc microbiology. This course introduced me into the microbial world during which I met Prof. D.K.G Ayanru, who led me into a kingdom – The kingdom of fungi. While my colleagues were frightened with the many mycological names, I found myself very comfortable with the terms. Before long, I started admiring the “American pronunciation” of these terms by my American trained supervisor who I now regard as my academic father. Please, give Prof. Ayanru a round of applause.

In order to document the indigenous uses of mushrooms among the Bini-speaking people residing in southern Nigeria, a rural community was used as a case study. Out of the 105 households in the community, background information as well as indigenous uses of mushrooms from 74 households (or 70% of the total) was documented. The study revealed that our ninety percent (90%) of the respondents consume mushrooms as food, while 21.6% use some mushrooms for medicinal purposes. On the average, each respondent consumes 5.8 ±0.41 species of mushrooms.